DayZ

This week, Brian is back with some of his early development memories, and a look at the future of DayZ with modding. Eugen is following up doing his best to explain our basic goals for 0.63 Experimental and 0.63 Stable (BETA). We're also welcoming back our Lead Gameplay Programmer Mirek - after months of non-stop hardcore programming, we made him share some of the behind the scenes science happening under his watch. To close things off, as usual, we have Baty taking a look at your awesome community content, and in his short update, we have our Brand Manager Martin offering what could possibly be a dream job for many of you content creators out there! Let's get to it.

Contents This Week

Dev Update/Brian

Dev Update/Eugen

Dev Update/Peter

Dev Update/Mirek

Dev Update/Martin

Community Spotlight

Dev Update/Brian

Greetings Survivors! Apologies on missing the last Status Report - cards on the table, I knew the rest of the team had strong detailed info for you all and I didn't want to keep rehashing my sentiments on public development, or how big the move into BETA is for DayZ as a product. In the case of the last Status Report, I think the video said a lot more than anything I could type. Most of what you end up reading from me at this point in the project is related to postulation, concepts, and struggles and I'm honestly not certain that most of you are interested in that.

We're at a stage where I feel like so many people out there are just holding their breath, waiting to get their hands on the first BETA builds and see for themselves how big the change is. Hell, I think I'm right there with you all on that.

Back in the summer of 2013 when Dean, Matt, and I were stuck in a tiny room above a laundry room out in Mnisek, we were whiteboarding key elements we thought DayZ should improve on the gameplay of the mod (beyond the obvious). A good deal of what was prototyped over 2014, and 2015 came from those whiteboard meetings.

I remember very clearly sitting down with Dean thinking on how we could improve the fresh spawned players chances to survive without basic weapons, as the desire was to make DayZ an experience similar to the novel "The Road" - which is where "punching" came in to play. (I distinctly remember Dean asking me if I thought it would make fresh spawns even more of a threat, and thus have a higher mortality rate when encountering skittish geared players - clearly I was wrong in dismissing this).

I'm rambling, but the point I'm trying to make is there is so much that the team, myself, Peter, have worked on throughout the years that just couldn't be done within the limitations that RV offered us - and it killed me to know time and time again that after documenting, and prototyping portions of the key design of what DayZ is to be that we were time and time again limited by the technology that DayZ originally steam with.

I can't emphasize enough to you all how insanely fortunate DayZ, and the DayZ dev team have been to have a company behind us that believes in the vision we set forth at the start of development to reach. So many titles I've worked on, or along side the development of have just had core mechanics, and feature sets lopped off with a hatchet in order to reach a set shelf date - never to reach their original full vision. It might be irritating to some out there in the user base, but the fact that we haven't had to sacrifice any of the core gameplay features yet is massive.

That said, one of the things Dean and I used to stress early on was that DayZ was not just a platform for people to create their own stories - but that like so many Bohemia titles before it, it is a platform for people to create their own vision of the apocalypse (or anything else that strikes their fancy).

This specific pillar of DayZ is one of many that will benefit massively from all the work that the engineering team has worked so hard on over the last few years. Ditching SQF alone is a massive step for any of you that have dabbled in modding the Arma titles, and the new animation system, as well as all the work the design team has done to new user actions takes the modding opportunities from what (to me) would feel like more of the same, modding Arma 2 or Arma 3 to a completely new level.

I could go on for hours about all the possibilities I see there, and all the fantastic mod authors I hope to see get their hands on it, and bring their own vision to DayZ. Namalsk, DayZ 2017, Taviana, Panthera, DayZero, and so much more. Part of some of the most exciting times as a fan of the DayZ Mod was when we began to see people create mods of the mod itself, and I genuinely feel that what DayZ will offer to the talent of those individuals is so far beyond what was possible before.

No, I don't have a set date for you for modding - but as it has been said in many status reports before - it will happen during our BETA phase of development. Obviously, for those that missed the announcement this will have to mean the release of the server tool package.

I just hope I get enough notice to stock up on snack food for when the first mods start hitting DayZ, because you can bet your ass I'm going to be losing countless hours of sleep exploring these new takes on DayZ as a player and not a developer.

- Brian Hicks / Creative Director

Dev Update/Eugen

Dear survivors, since there is no concise information on what BETA is and what exactly will happen near its release, I would like to focus on recapping what our current plans regarding these things are.

You might have seen our Gamescom video, but there is more to come and lot more things to work on. Because the 0.63 update is bringing all the new technology to you, the players, there will be a very tight feedback loop following its release to Experimental. There will be numerous changes coming in over the course of 0.63 Experimental, and some features might not be available on the first Experimental release, as we slowly ramp up to keep the performance and bug fixing focused.

There will be tons of players trying to get in, and we will try and accommodate as many players as possible, because I do strongly believe it will be very hard to go back to 0.62 after this huge change happens.

Now once that goes through all of the parts that need proper testing, and you are happy with the stability of the experience, we will start preparing for the Stable launch of 0.63 - the DayZ BETA. At that point in time, it is our intention to make DayZ server files available to anyone for free on Steam, meaning that you will be able to host your own servers. As far as platforms go, we aim to have these for both Linux and Windows.

Following that, I know a lot of people will start digging into the data itself and have fun modifying it. It's going to be interesting to see what you guys come up with. However, you might be a bit limited during the initial release, as the current state of things suggests that the modding toolset might be behind schedule, and will be released shortly after BETA comes online. The toolset will be running the new Enfusion tools that you might have seen on different pictures from the office, and will again be available to all our players.

But since lot of the data is compatible in some way, I think a lot of models will find their way into the game quickly, and people will start researching the new script as they test it out. Since almost everything you see in game will be written in script, you will have some amazing opportunities to change and bend the game in any way you want.

Together with the DayZ server release, we want to provide our back-end technology that we internally call the Srvlet. This is basically our hive implementation in its entirety. With this strong tool, you will be able to set up your own hive, and do anything you might have ever imagined with your servers. Because this is actually quite complex, our intention is to provide decent documentation for the technologies recommended to run this platform.

After the toolset gets out, we will look into opening the workshop on Steam, so that you guys can start sharing your creations freely. It's something we are especially excited about!

There is more to it of course, like having a DayZ Launcher as a central piece to access all that, and I will try and space out this information and go into more detail as we get closer. With what features we exactly have in mind, what content you should expect and how these things will be handled.

Hopefully this has helped you to understand how serious we are about this important milestone in DayZ development.

- Eugen Harton / Lead Producer

Dev Update/Peter

Alongside crucial improvements which affect core parts of DayZ such asmovement, ranged or melee combat we often mentioned, there is also other parts which are very important for delivering the best overall experience.

You could already see the dynamic target selection in one of the previous Status Reports, and some of you could try it out in action with showcase of DEMO build at Gamescom. For me, together with whole HUD and new user actions, it’s an important part of the game which underlines all these great changes which separate old (0.62 and previous versions) and new DayZ (upcoming 0.63 AKA Beta).

From our internal playtests and feedback from players at Gamescom, we decided to improve the HUD part of dynamic target selection and user actions a bit further. Now there is more options related to user actions, usually performed on some kind of target in world, shown directly in the floating widget of dynamic target selection, which makes it more readable for the player. These were previously located in bottom left corner, and they were quite easily overlooked when they became possible to perform (remember new user actions are contextual). In bottom left corner, there are nowonly actions which are applied directly to your character for now.

Another improvement to the bottom left corner of HUD that we've currently made is the addition of item in hands. Its name, actual condition and its quantity or stack is now shown in the bottom left too, above actions. This offers constantly consistent overview of information related to equipped item and items around the character without the need to over-use inventory screen to find out such basic info.

While shuffling parts of HUD around, we ended with dynamic cross hair, also. It changes form contextually when needed, to indicate some possibilities or states. Good example is a time progression of currently performed continuous action. Of course, HUD visuals are nowhere near final by any means. For those players who want to be immersed as much as possible in the world of DayZ, there is an option to turn off HUD completely on demand (of course independently from quick-bar).

To mention melee combat as well, its state is very rough and basically still in a state of prototype. We wanted to proof the concept out with new system of targeting and full body attack animations which are locking character movement, alongside with hit impacts which can take controls of character completely. Now when we've laid the basics and seen the potential it has, it is the way to go for us, unless something unexpected happens.

As we definitely want to add some player skill to melee combat, we need to extend it with possibilities. Currently we are prototyping blocks, which reduce received damaged and influence hit impacts from attack, as well as evades, which helps to get out from line of attack. Next up is adding melee attacks with ranged weapons, like stabbing with bayonets, hitting with butt stock or pistol whips, as there is no worse feeling of helplessness when you are armed and someone successfully locks you into series of impacts and you need to throw gun down to be able to fight.

Planned next are advanced moves such as knock-downs, finishing attacks on opponent on the ground or kicks/pushes. Anyway it’s really important for us to make solid foundation first because without it, melee combat won’t work as a whole, and it won’t matter how much depth and added layers will be there.

As far as new camera implementation I mentioned in last Status Report goes, it’s from great part done. We just need to promote some functionality to the script, so we can set specific FOV in iron sights and optics. Also we will be able to start toying with naked eye zoom again. Apart from that we are dealing with 3PP camera position in space in different modes like raised, melee combat or sprint.

With form following function... see you in Chernarus folks!

- Peter Nespesny / Lead Designer

Dev Update/Mirek

Some time has passed since I last wrote my Status Report. One of the reasons is that we're now working on longer term tasks and it's quite hard to write a Status Report without repeating myself. Another reason is that we're mostly working on things which aren't immediately visible. Today, I will summarise what we have done over the last two months.

During August, major part of the team worked on delivering features that ended up being part of the DEMO version for Gamescom. It was quite stressful, because time was passing very fast and we had to stabilise the DEMO build and fix the most visible issues. Anyway, I believe that we were successful and we could return to our unfinished work with a good feeling of accomplishment.

Now, we are mostly focused on improving character's movement and combat mechanics, because the entire development team is still not very satisfied with what we have presented at Gamescom. This is a very important part of the DayZ experience and we want to have the best possible implementation before we hit BETA. It's also important for fighting against the infected, because it's almost impossible to tweak and polish AI behaviour without having the player movement finalised - and so this is the reason why work on AI is also a bit on hold for now.

One of the major things which were in progress before Gamescom is the game entity hierarchy (which is how the scene is represented for the game - so it is a system you won't be able to see). DayZ has been using an Arma legacy "proxy object hierarchy" - and this technology was limiting us to do some of the more exciting stuff from the DayZ feature list.

We decided to switch this scene representation technology to the new one provided by our in-house Enfusion Engine. This will allow us to do things better and in a more optimised manner, allowing us to add more visual effects easily and for example create much better animations for weapons handling.

Another thing we're now working on is the re-implementation of vehicles using the new systems. I have to admit that we're still working mostly on the physics part, and the character part is still not ready - but we hope that we will start working on character representation in vehicles soon (probably right after movement and combat mechanics).

The entire system around vehicles has changed a lot. They are now composed of several configurable components, we're supporting generic number of axes (not only two like in 0.62 and before), handling is much more responsive and vehicles have a new suspension model, which will help players driver over smaller obstacles. Things which still are not finished are better tires friction model and simulation of some gearbox extreme limits.

I wasn't sure if I should show you the following teaser (like I said, the character representation in vehicles isn't ready yet), but here it is. This is how we're testing vehicle physics for now - please welcome Fred Flintstone as a DayZ survivor, testing the new suspension system:

(Please note: these are not final values for suspension and current values are serving for demonstration of new suspension model)

Also, there are things which I would like to write about the topic of modding and what we are doing for supporting this feature, but it would be a lot of text for now, so I will write about it in next status reports (at least I'll have some ammunition for next time!).

- Miroslav Maněna / Lead Gameplay Progammer

Dev Update/Martin

Hello survivors! As I shared in the last Status Report, creating videos of a game in development is not always an easy task for us. It takes a lot of time from our regular schedules, and the closer we are to major releases of DayZ, the less time we have for recording gameplay. After experiencing the production of the 0.63 Dev Log, evaluating our options, and looking at the upcoming BETA/1.0 releases, we've made the decision that now is the right time to invest into our video production some more.

Just yesterday, we've put up a job opening for what we at Bohemia call a Game Capture Artist[www.bistudio.com]. Ultimately, we're looking for a content creator that will work alongside me, Baty and Eugen, and spend most of his/her time capturing DayZ gameplay, as well as coming up with concepts of DayZ videos (and, eventually, trailers).

It's a job that provides a perfect opportunity for making the hire directly from our community of players and content creators, and we'd be the happiest people on Earth to actually hire a DayZ fan, so please do apply[www.bistudio.com] if the job ad sounds like something you'd like to do for a living!

I'll just add a personal warning: don't be misguided into thinking that this job is just playing 0.63 all day! It's also a lot of planning and documentation, and you really need to understand the technical aspects of video production as well.

That said, we don't need years of professional experience, but a creative, organised and communicative person who's going to drive our video production to a very high standard. We also need you to work directly with us in Prague or Bratislava, but Bohemia Interactive will help you relocate should you feel a bit on the edge about that!

Send them CVs in[www.bistudio.com] - and come live closer to the real Chernarus!

- Martin Čulák / Brand Manager

Community Spotlight

Hey Survivors!

These two weeks have passed really quickly! So, let's see what's happening in the community.

I need to start with a letter sent to our forum. It is from our big supporter to the Dev Team. Her name is Baroness, she is an amazing content creator and her message made me cry. She met her husband in DayZ! What an amazing story! Thank you, Baroness[forums.dayz.com], we love you!

Hello. You don’t really know me. Well, maybe Baty does, a bit, in a way. I’m just a regular player.

When the standalone came out, I was coerced by my brother into buying this game and play with him. I had never gamed on PC ever, had only ever slightly gamed on console when I was 12-13 (I am 34 now). Everything was very new to me. He told me it looked promising, explained what alpha was, and off we went on adventures as I spawned in Kamyshovo for the first time.

Being on the creative side I have always enjoyed documenting my travels inside Chernarus. When I had gathered enough friends, we made clans, we built communities, alliances and harbored hate with other groups, as these things usually go. Some are still ongoing friendships that are on a deeper level, and this is amazing to me.

About 2 years ago, some friends and I disbanded our group and decided to join a roleplaying community. It was fairly small at the time, and being the creative and helpful person I am, both of the leaders decided to include me on staff, where I developed some community management skills, learned to deal with all the kinds of hate that you guys are getting right now. I mean, I’ve been called Cersei more times than I can count on 2 hands.

I’ve sowed many seeds of rapport, friendship, kindness and warmth, and I’ve been able to reap affinities, loyal friends, loving bonds, and even love.

I met my husband in this last community, it was called ChernarusRP. My now husband (then-gamer-friend) and I joined forces and nurtured this incredible fellowship of like-minded survivalists with a penchant for roleplaying. All 700 of them. Us working together, entertaining complimentary notions of unity, respect and healthy dialogue, got us thinking; we very quickly found out that, through working so closely together for a long period of time, we just ‘clicked’, and it just ‘worked’.

Within the year, our relationship grew steadily towards a goal that we felt was right for the both of us; he moved from Texas to be with me in Québec (Canada).

We have been together ever since. It was because of your game and everything that is has to offer, that I was able to meet the man of my dreams, the love of my life, my missing puzzle piece. My everything, really.

Why am I writing this to you? Because I’ve noticed lately all the hate that you are getting. Spaggie and I had a long and interesting conversation about everything that you guys do behind the scenes that go completely unnoticed. He told me that he sometimes writes little thank you notes and encouragement in the bug tracker, just for you guys to see that all that you do is greatly appreciated. In my opinion, more people should do this, every day.

And had I not installed this game and kept at it, I would not be with this incredible man who I am with today.

And I have you guys to thank for that.

So thank you. For everything. BETA will be a blast I’m sure. I am following closely. We all are. And screw the haters. You got such a loving fan base and we’re all behind you and cheering you on. We might not tell you every day, but trust me, we all root for you and this wonderful game.

Thank you for reading.Baroness <3

And thank you all for all your support, like in this thread[forums.dayz.com]. It means a world to us. Thank you!

Let's see a new chapter of the Humans of Chernarus series. If you don't know it, it is a collection of thoughts of fictional people living across Chernarus. A people who are facing this post-apocalyptic world and try to survive to the next day. You can find the whole collection[imgur.com] here.

"Good luck is a funny thing. It always seems like it belongs to someone else. Bad luck, on the other hand, we all have it. We harbour it to convince ourselves that our problems and misdoings are not our own... However, there in truth I’ve learned one thing during my stay on this shitty Earth. There is no such thing as luck, good or bad. There are only those who are prepared, and those who are not.”

-Symon, of the Gomorrah Casino

I love weddings! And I hope you do as well, because this one happened in DayZ. It may not have been the most romantic one, but it surely was entertaining. Dr. Von Hauer married his wife in Novodmitrovsk church. They said their vows and lived happily until their deaths. Which could not have been too long, as it is DayZ after all. I myself almost got married in DayZ, so I envy the bride for making it all the way. The highlight of the video for me is the flower boy, who throws pieces of ghillie on the ground.

Valdark2 posted his newest picture to Reddit and it is pretty cool, what do you think?

If you need some large wallpapers, just tell NeuroticEUROtic, he is a specialist. It is sometimes hard to find a really good wallpaper for three monitors but this guy can sort you out.

Here is Skalisty Panorama 5760 x 1080[i.redd.it] by him and it is beautiful. I have it on my background already :)

The last thing that I was looking forward to showing you today is a riddle again!

In the last Status Report, it was West Lopatino Evacuation Camp. You sent me a lot of correct answers last time and you said it was toooooo easy. Okey! Here is a challenge for you. Where can you find this deer stand? Send me your answers to our official Twitter account. And thank you for all your answers!

With Brian missing this week (no worries, he will be back at full force next time!), Eugen and Peter reflect upon the new features and content presented at Gamescom. Eugen is finally sharing our full 0.63 Dev Log video with 16 minutes of Gamescom DEMO gameplay in Full HD, Peter is reacting to some of the community feedback regarding the missing naked eye zoom and new key binds for firearms, and Martin and Baty share some of the good vibes from our community (both the one at EGX, where they travelled last week, and online!). Let's do some reading and watching folks, it's a juicy Status Report once again!

Contents This Week

Dev Update/Eugen

Dev Update/Peter

Dev Update/Martin

Community Spotlight

Dev Update/Eugen

The last two weeks had us focused on different issues in the base and core features of DayZ. As previously mentioned, these are tackled through smaller scrum teams that are dedicated to these topics. Currently, we are running ranged combat team with focus on weapons and another one focused on melee combat. More are expected to be set up from vehicles to Central Economy or the infected. These should enable much faster iteration that can deliver on their goals as the technology requires less changes under the hood.

This means that we are no longer tied to larger technology changes and can focus on the stuff that’s important to us and players alike: things that tackle immediate concerns that have troubled the game for a very long time. The approach we chose is based around priorities that carry through to other features, so we spend less time going back and redoing stuff over and over.

Current priorities started with base movement of the character, which defines a lot of the work that is going to happen in both melee and ranged combat. Once we nail down the details, we can quickly implement and iterate things like player speed changing with rotation or rotation limits in order to cut on the erratic movement that is usually described as "zig-zagging".

There are tons of things like these that community cares very deeply about. We take this feedback very seriously. Lot of these things have driven community interaction over these years. Bugs that we didn’t fix, features that didn’t have consistency or detail or were missing entirely. There is a reason behind everything. We spend a lot of time on figuring these out and once we are happy with our solutions we are going to get the discussion going. The process, however, requires you to test them in-game and that is where we go from prototype to full fledged feature.

The thing is you try, and go for functionality first before the visuals get polished. It usually does not matter if it looks good if you’re developing the game. But it’s also the reason we don’t show many of these things that are in their early implementation. because they are just functional enough for us to iterate, but not polished enough to present ourselves with. That brings me to the next important thing.

Imagine all these great things created with placeholders or skeletons of functionality that we look into and keep iterating on.

Ideas are just ideas and they usually change for the better as development moves forward. What seems fun and good on paper though sometimes does not translate well in-game. If the technology used is layered enough to let designers test their ideas, we know we can differentiate the bad from the good. I don’t believe that we always come up with best solutions on the first iteration, and so that's why we listen to your feedback.

Even when I look at our 0.63 Dev Log video below, I know (and see) tons of issues that just irritate me. But I’m not alone and this team is the best I had the chance to work with, and I have no doubt we can solve the issues. BETA can not come soon enough!

That said, we would like to focus on covering these hot topics and how we solved them in the current iteration, because we bleed passion for what DayZ should be.

After DEMO showcase at Gamescom, many of you expressed concerns about missing zoom with naked eye as well as toggling to aim down the sights.

First off all, I want to underline that absence of naked eye zoom was intentional as we run into technical problems due interference with switching to iron sights, witch was key-binded to middle mouse button. Time was running out and instead of fixing the old camera behaviour, we decided to cut it completely, so that we can start implementing a new camera from scratch to allow us to have more control over it (which is being worked on right now).

Anyway, now when that dynamic zoom is currently missing, we can start asking questions: is it really needed? How does it contribute to gameplay? What are the pros and cons? Eye zoom is kind of a long-term trademark of Bohemia Interactive games, the same way as the free look being independent on character movement. Simulation of mid to long range engagement wouldn’t be possible without such feature, as fluid, on demand changing of field of view from wide to correct perspective is needed there, typically for observing your surroundings and during gunfights. Without it, characters are just small group of pixels in distance, and probably no-one enjoys pixel hunting.

On the other hand, we know that in the case we gave the player character some supernatural abilities, we would lower the importance of items which should be used in such situations, like binoculars or scopes (which can be used even while not mounted on a weapon). Currently, these have very limited use among players, as naked eye zoom (or focus if you want to call it like that) is enough for them to observe environment.

Also, there is a bit of a problem with continuous switching of object LODs and textures, which puts additional pressure on the CPU/GPU. While this would still be the case with binos and scopes as well, these changes to FOV are instant and not continuous. Missing eye zoom will lead to bringing player engagements to much closer distances - and that’s the most important thing in DayZ - player interactions.

Final decision hasn't been made yet - personally, I’m inclined to keeping this feature in the game, but even in the worse case scenario, aiming down sights will maintain correct perspective (with a bit of added zoom while holding breath to simulate focus), to avoid aforementioned pixel hunting during gunfights.

I mentioned aiming down sights and we are aware that current keybind (middle mouse button click while raised)is far from ideal as it feels clunky - exactly opposite to real life, where aiming down sights is as simple as just moving your head and aligning the eye with sights. What is really important to me is the fact that there shouldn’t be any toggle into the aimed stance (raised nor iron sights/scopes). Which means character should go ideally to an idle pose when all controls are released. Toggle-able aggressive stance can unintentionally fiddle with character’s body language, which disrupts gameplay and the experience players have during their interactions.

Currently, we are experimenting with different approaches of switching to iron sights while raised. Key-bind on keyboard can work, but I’m not a fan of it as it destroys the basic firearm controls between mouse and keyboard.

On standard mouse, there is only two buttons which come as possible candidates to use - middle mouse button, and right mouse button. Scrolling up with the mouse wheel to aim down sights is much better than precisely clicking the wheel, also it’s meant for switching between iron sights and scope in case the given firearm allows it (think AKs and other guns from the eastern block, or additional sights mounted on RIS from the side of a weapon) and for cycling through scope zoom levels (for example hunting scope).

Personally, I prefer a simple double click and holding right mouse button (basically double click without releasing the button after the second click of button) as a shortcut to switch directly from lowered arms to iron sights. To switch back from aiming down sights (ADS), just release the right button, click and hold it again (same for toggling from raise to ADS). These two methods are far better and we will most likely keep both.

Last but not least, we've recently implemented turns to the movement itself (until now in 0.63, turns was only in idle) which is a game changer. It simply prevents zigzagging (which is used for dodging bullets) by limiting character rotation speed and adding rotation radius to turns while the player is moving. It’s scaled with character speed - the faster the movement, the bigger the radius is. There are still some issues that we are know need to be ironed out (in reality, nobody can see their back while doing 180 degree turns) and there is a bunch of missing features which will make it better and more visually pleasing (like tilting the character while making turns).

This solution differs from full-fledged inertia system, which can lead to players feeling like they are driving a tank with all that acceleration, deceleration and stopping after sharp turns. We want to thoroughly test it now, to feel how it plays and if it’s capable enough to achieve our goal of having smooth navigation through environment - as we definitely would like to maintain the hardly earned responsiveness and smoothness of the new character.

Without zigzagging... see you in Chernarus folks!

- Peter Nespesny / Lead Designer

Dev Update/Martin

Survivors! After a vicious editing battle that took waaaay longer than we all had planned, we were finally able to deliver the 0.63 Dev Log today. It's taking a quick (well, relatively quick, it's some 16 minutes of gameplay!) look at the key things that we presented at Gamescom last month.

Let me just quickly give credits to Baty and our QA Engineer Dan Fialka for their tireless work on the actual gameplay capture - as I have said in the previous Status Report, it's not always an easy work tinkering with the internal build. I hope you'll all appreciate the early look at 0.63 at least in this format - it's certainly not the same as experiencing the new animation system and player controller first hand, but it's the best we can do now.

Suffice to say, this Dev Log was a good learning experience and it made us rethink the way we produce video content for DayZ. Going forward, we want to streamline the creative process behind making development videos, and hopefully find a good, effective workflow for gameplay capture in 0.63.

Last week, me and Baty also visited EGX in Birmingham, and boy: did we meet a lot of awesome people! Originally, our visit was really planned as a last-minute trip, as we just wanted to meet a couple of DayZ content creators at EGX - there was no booth involved like at Gamescom, and we only packed a bunch of DayZ lanyards just in case.

Somehow, we ended up meeting with some 30 fellow survivors at once, occupying half of the EGX business lounge and demoing 0.63 to everybody (thanks to Matthew and the rest of the EGX organisers for not kicking us out!).

Blue and Queenie, M1ndr, SepticFalcon and Dzoana all had their mods and friends there, we've also finally met the Twitter super-spammer Spaggie (and his friend @EssexRockerz!)... well I would like to name everybody we met, but it would make for a really long list. Thanks everyone for coming and chatting with us (and thanks Baty for talking me into the trip!), you all make the best, most dedicated community out there.

We'll definitely be back to EGX next year, hopefully with a more official presence and a proper booth! Here's a couple of photos (credits to N-Reid!) and Tweets from the event:

- Martin Čulák/ Brand Manager

Community Spotlight

Hey Survivors!

I hope you had amazing two weeks. As Martin mentioned, we were at EXG and it was epic, thanks everyone for coming. It was nice to meet you all!

Let's start with the Real Chernarus by BrenUno, who‘s been there and took some amazing pictures for the community. Can you recognize all these places?

Streamer DeadlySlob did an amazing and very funny role-play video, where he acts as a drug addicted person. Other players were really surprised by his behaviour. We love it!

And the second one is by Squad_Crow, who did his view of Novodmitrovsk and Lopatino Castle.

[i.imgur.com]

[i.imgur.com]

AFX was on Rose City Comic Con in Portland as a survivor from DayZ. She had everything that the true survivor needs - duck tape, military boots and a long stick with an apple! I don't know if she killed any infected on her trip but she is definitely ready for it!

[i.imgur.com]

French server Team Onu is preparing an event again. It is called Manhunt - Dark Walk and it will be tomorrow and you can see more info after you log in to their web pages[team-onu.com]. Here is a little teaser for it.

I know it is easy for hardcore players, but I will do a harder one next time.

I am so happy to see all your content guys, no kidding. I try to watch all your videos, pictures and everything you post to our social networks or Reddit. Thank you for that and for your support, because we need it. We really appreciate to know that YOU CARE about DayZ. Because DayZ is love, DayZ is life for us.

An outbreak of Gamescom plague caused chaos in our schedules and organisation, but most of the team is back in business now. Brian sets a perspective on how to balance excitement and expectations now when we're approaching an important milestone in DayZ development. Eugen sums up our immediate internal development goals that will eventually lead us to that BETA milestone, and how they add up to the big picture of DayZ 1.0. We're welcoming back Viktor, who's found some time to reflect upon the new animation changes presented at Gamescom, and there's also Martin's update on the status of a promised 0.63 Dev Log video. As usual, Baty is closing of with awesome community content, and invites everyone to Birmingham's EGX next week! Let's get ready for some reading!

Contents This Week

Dev Update/Hicks

Dev Update/Eugen

Dev Update/Viktor

Dev Update/Martin

Community Spotlight

Dev Update/Hicks

Greetings Survivors,

Y'know, I've seen a lot of folks talking about 0.63 like it will solve world hunger - which is something I've seen associated with other pending builds before. Be it the new renderer, changes to sound, adjustments to economy, or even the introduction of the V3S. Typically people get pissy with me when I have to try and bring things down to earth, but I'm alright with being the bad guy in this case.

Anytime you change the technology powering a piece of software, hell anytime you change the software itself in any way, you come up against risk. The degree of risk is the factor that fluctuates, and its up to the developers creating said software to weigh the risk of a change, versus the pay off. For us as a team, and for DayZ as a product the pay off is well worth the risk. For years now we've been internally prototyping, be it in documentation, in script, or in intermediate technologies built to serve the gap between what is functioning on the consumer Steam branch, and what is functioning internally on the main trunk.

I've had the pleasure of previewing, discussing, and in some cases "teasing" these prototypes, and documentation for years. Eager to share our intent with you, but often blocked from actually sharing the experience with you due to technical limitations. The .63/Beta update is the first major step towards the technology finally being able to bring this vision forward. It is not the end of the road, but it is most certainly the most important lap we have made

I did not overstate it when I said that the change to animation system, player controller, and scripting language would begin to alter how you interact with the world itself. This is fundamentally a huge change, both internally and externally for you, the consumer. I'm neither trying to charge up the hype train, nor am I trying to crush anyone's hopes and dreams. It's rare that a title gets the support from a company to spend the time working on improving the core technology to better meet the needs of design. Typically, technology limitations inform design within a few small exceptions from time to time. Its been a long road, and bumpy as hell ,but we're finally within sight of being able to finally share with all of you the things we've all worked on for so long.

And we couldn't have done it without all of you.

- Brian Hicks / Creative Director

Dev Update/Eugen

Hello survivors! Post-gamescom rush has ended quickly with a lot people getting sick, feverish from Gamescom plague. With people missing we were trying to get through the feedback in our internal post-mortem and follow up it up in the plan for following months and weeks before BETA becomes available. I have to say that the road does not end there, and we still are dedicated to polish the experience further before we leave Early Access. What BETA means is that most if not all features promised will be implemented in the new technology, and iterated upon further as we move to leave out of Early Access with 1.0 version. I believe that feedback will be critical in this phase where all the issues need to get ironed out.

In the meantime, we focused on issues either seen during Gamescom or general plans that have been set out. Special attention has been put on critical issues of camera that was still up for refactor. As it is nowhere near the level that we want from the game, nor has the feature set needed. From the clipping issues to twitchy movement and abuse, there is lot of ground to cover.

And there is a lot more as the whole Gamescom experience worked as an amazing focus test on large scale. We had the chance to see how people work around the new stuff available and observe to see the flaws in the whole system. Which was an amazing opportunity, and I can`t wait to have the same experience with other people online, so that we can make this game the best it can be together.

The next step for us, is to finish up more advanced features for melee and ranged combat, additional camera technology to support all the new gameplay, and finalizing the character movement and variation, before we move heavily into area of infected, where some heavy work needs to be done.

Once the base loop feels really good, we will move onto rest of the game to polish all these things in the new technology. We will survive!

- Eugen Harton / Lead Producer

Dev Update/Viktor

Hi everyone. It has been a while since the last time I contributed to the Status Report. The past weeks were a bit hectic with the animation things related to the Gamescom build. I think animators did a great job adding all the content which everyone was able to play for couple of days. We were very pleased by the positive feedback to the new player controller, injured animations, heavy items animations, combat and everything else that was presented.

The version available to play was not final by any means. We are still aiming for significant improvements in many areas of player character and infected as well. The presented wounded character was a first draft in fact. In the upcoming days, weeks and months we will continue on animation improvements and reworks.

Currently, we are also working on some new death animations. We are adding directional deaths for all item types and all stances. Initially, the character will play the pre-recorded animation only but later, we will start with directional death animation and in the middle of the animation, we will switch to ragdoll so that the characters would fall and align with environment nicely.

Another big part of the game that is being worked on are poses for different items. There are hundreds of various food items, weapons or tools that need a proper pose. From the very beginning of the DayZ, we have decided to have a nice holding for each of these items. At the moment, all these poses are being made and added to the game.

- Viktor Kostik / Lead Animator

Dev Update/Martin

Survivors, I just want to briefly update you on the status of the 0.63 Dev Log that we teased and promised to deliver after Gamescom. Unfortunately, a sizeable portion of the team (including Baty, Eugen and me) got hit by an outbreak of some sneaky virus that we most likely brought with us back from Gamescom.

Since we have a very small marketing/community team here, this further delayed the production of the Dev Log video, but we're back in business now, and we've also managed to get some additional help from our QA Engineer Dan Fialka (who's been with us at Gamescom as well). He's recording some of the gameplay clips as we speak, so hopefully we'll be able to speed things up a notch now.

Recording a couple of gameplay clips from an internal build may sound like an an easy task, but if they are supposed to be done according to a script, and connected with a developer voice over, it suddenly becomes a complicated undertaking - especially when the internal build of DayZ just decides to behave weirdly, and randomly throws crashes and glitches your way. Of course, we want to avoid showing these things in official content as much as possible, as the intent is to present the best of what the current build can offer.

If anything, it also shows that the build is simply not ready to be played beyond a very controlled and structured environment that was the Gamescom booth, and that our decision to not release it on a Steam branch was very well reasoned. We'll let you know on our forums and social media channels the moment the video is ready - for now, please hold tight end enjoy some of the community content from Gamescom that we shared in the last Status Report!

- Martin Čulák/ Brand Manager

Community Spotlight

Survivors!

The Gamescom epidemic hit a lot of us and I wasn't an exception. But I am ready for a new event! You might know there is a show called EGX in Birmingham[www.egx.net], England. I and my colleague, brand manager Martin Čulák, will be there on Friday and we want to meet everyone from DayZ community, who is also planning to attend this gaming event. Watch our Twitter for more information.

Barely Infected came with an amazing idea. He organized a group of survivors and built a camp named "DayZ Village[barelyinfected.com]" where all the good people can live together and help each other in this cruel time of apocalypse. This project had great success and The Village is nowadays still pretty crowded. You can find it on Spaggie's server at 185.16.86.48:2402 and The Village is located on the Zub castle. I spent some time there and it was awesome. People are nice, they care about each other and try to protect The Village together. The Village was planned for just one week, but with this success, Barely Infected decided to prolong it.

Everyone is looking forward to the 0.63 update. But not as much as this guy. KaskadianRepublik's body is ready. But since 0.63 is still not ready for public, you will need to wait until it's done.

I want to show you one video. It is about love between a dog and a human. Fluffy cute wolf who wants to eat everyone around him. But Whoopsie DayZ falls in love with him and wants to have him as a pet. How this can end? I laughed a lot, you need to see it.

This week, the Status Report fully focuses on recapping our Gamescom experience. We've been presenting the 0.63 playable DEMO in Cologne, Germany the entire past week, and met literally hundreds of players who tried the DEMO live at our booth as we watched them play. We've gathered a lot of important feedback, which both Eugen and Peter cover in their texts. There are also VoDs of Gamescom live streams, some exciting Gamescom gameplay from our community, and more! Let's get to it.

Contents This Week

Dev Update/Eugen

Dev Update/Peter

Dev Update/Martin

Community Spotlight

Dev Update/Eugen

Gamescom DEMO has been an amazing experience for all of us. Being able to finally get direct feedback on 0.63 and talk to our old school players, or see the new ones playing it for the first time has made me more than a little happy. After getting this DayZ potential ready tech wise, we had a game to share, and talk about. It was exciting and exhausting. We are looking forward to sharing more.

At the same time, I have some less exciting news for you. As the build we brought to Gamescom would still take weeks to get ready for public testing, we will not be releasing the DEMO for Steam. We really wanted to, but it just no longer makes sense to spend time polishing a very small part of the whole BETA experience. Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive on the floor, and I do believe we are hitting the right notes on what BETA should feel like. Rather than releasing a DEMO, our goal is to get the BETA/0.63 update out as soon as possible in its entirety on Experimental branch when ready. That does not mean it's going to be rushed. We do believe that the only way out of this hellhole is a really good game that all of us want to play.

We are going to focus on the combat a little while longer to incorporate some of the good feedback that we got, as well as features missing from the DEMO that were cut before it was used on the show floor. There is still a lot of details to implement, or content to convert in that regard. Since we have only returned from Gamescom floor on Sunday late night, we plan to have an internal post-mortem first and get the team together to plan out the next month in detail.

However, as you may know, the scope of BETA is huge, and even though we have developed a lot of these features during the same time as technology, now it is time to put it all together. It’s a painful process, but the game is finally there. We are going to need a lot of balancing runs, polishing and bug fixing before we are happy to put it out. We will be reading the feedback on the details available and try and share with you more as we recover from the trip.

- Eugen Harton / Lead Producer

Dev Update/Peter

Gamescom 2017 has ended, so let my write down my impressions. At first, knowing all that stuff which was completely missing from the DEMO, or just in early prototype state, and all the remaining limitations we still needs to figure out, I was feeling a bit insecure about the quality of the DEMO build that we brought for showcase at the Gamescom booth. I'm a person who likes to have things in order, and as polished as possible, which leads to situations where I’m just not pleased enough with the current state of the game. So naturally, I was very curious how it's all going to turn out in the end.

New character controller and animation system with very responsive and fluent character movement, coupled with new physics for better collisions, allowing for smooth traversing through environment (yes even running down/up the hill!)

New movement sets for turning, injured, falling character as well as carrying heavy items around in hands

New gestures with the ability to move while using them

New stamina system, differentiating character movement speed depending on their load

New melee combat system with attack and hit impacts animations

New ranged combat with extended weapon handling and aiming with new sway and recoil

New intuitive way to perform actions with items in hands even while moving, crafting new ones even directly from world and interactions with environment without pixel hunting

New HUD and inventory with clear layout and resized cargo and item sizes

New voice communication including personal radio, megaphone and public address system

New advanced placing which will be used for precise placement of specific items

New electricity system with cable reels to reach far places

And much more...

There were thousands of gamers and content creators looking forward to get their hands on the first iteration of what DayZ will become in BETA. It was an interesting mixture of people that never played DayZ before, ones who put it down waiting patiently for BETA, and those who still play DayZ regularly and spent from hundreds to thousands of hours in-game. I've spent a great amount of time observing how people play the game, and discussed with them about what they like on the new DayZ, what would they still like to see improved, and why.

With this approach, I gained a ton of feedback. It was very positive to see and hear that we are actually on the right track, and people do like what they see, and especially how it plays. Bear in mind nothing is set in stone yet, and everything could be changed, especially after valuable feedback we received. It will allow us to refine the design a bit more, so in it’s final form, DayZ could unleash its full potential, and allow people to enjoy what DayZ is so well known for - an emergent gameplay full of interactions, which creates stories filled with unique experience and leaving strong memories in atmospheric world.

After meeting you at Gamescom 2017... see you in Chernarus folks!

- Peter Nespesny / Lead Designer

Dev Update/Martin

As both Eugen and Peter mentioned, Gamescom was a really positive experience for us. The very stressful couple of weeks before we left the office and travelled to Cologne were definitely worth it in the end, as we've been met with a very warm welcome at Gamescom, and also fulfilled our mission: to gather preliminary feedback on an early 0.63 build.

As Baty will share in her part of the Status Report, we did our best to provide some meaningful coverage for those of you not visiting Gamescom. The couple of live streams we organized with Twitch and GameStar.de were quite full of interesting news, so do check them out below, along with content from M1ndr, Barely Infected or Merlin from DayZ Underground.

It';s a bit unfortunate that we were not able to capture a better gameplay clip for both live streams in time (due to both time constraints and last minute fixes to the playable DEMO build), so the presented footage was a bit bare bones and glitchy at times, but as promised, we will deliver a good amount of quality 1080p/60FPS footage in the following days. The footage will take the form of a Dev Log video similar to those made for 0.62, and you can expect around 10 minutes of new content with Eugen's developer narration.

Also, since we decided not to make the DEMO available on Steam, we'll see if we can at least organise a live stream where you can see live gameplay, and ask us questions. Our pre-gamescom live stream was a bit of a technical failure, so we need to spend some more time planning the live stream, but we have a decent combat plan to make it all happen.

That's it from me this week. Thanks everyone who visited us at Gamescom, you were awesome! Now, let's see some of the community content from our booth.

- Martin Čulák/ Brand Manager

Community Spotlight

Gamescom is over, we are back in Prague, and work on BETA continues.

It was something new to us and some people in the team have never been to a big event like Gamescom before. It was exhausting, but it was worth it, because your feedback is what we really needed. And we are really happy we got a lot of very positive feedback from you!

It was a total of 6 of us from the DayZ team, and for five days, you were able to meet us in the booth and play DayZ on 18 PCs. You could play a short PvP demo, try some features from the upcoming 0.63 build and grab some nice little presents along the way. You've surely seen videos that appeared mostly on Twitter and Reddit from people who have already tried the demo. Unfortunately, as Martin explained, we do not have an official video ready yet, but we will catch up this week and if everything goes according to our plan, the video commented by our Lead Producer Eugen Harton will be released by the end of the week. Before it's out, you can look at the impressions of M1ndr and Rene (Barely Infected) who also visited us to try the DEMO:

There were two live streams during Gamescom where our Lead Producer Eugen was talking about the Gamescom DEMO and BETA. First one on the line was the GameStar.de live stream, and the second one was a Twitch official Gamescom live stream (watch the VOD here[www.twitch.tv], you need to move to time 8:10:55).

We also hosted a community meetup at Gamescom, where we met ten of you and barely fit into our small meeting room. For almost two hours, we talked about DayZ and what you can expect from the BETA. And you got some special gifts we prepared for this event. I would like to thank you very much for coming to see us and I hope you enjoyed the meeting as much as we did!

Before Gamescom, we organized an event on Skalisty Island where players became knights and fought in teams to capture the Skalisty castle. Except for a bit of a waiting waiting, everything went well and all players were quite happy.

There were some content creators who were streaming or recording their gameplay which they then placed on YouTube, so those of you who were not there can see it too. Blue team won the battle of the castle, but the greys fought bravely too. I want to thank everyone for their patience and the fact that they have arrived. You can look forward to another event soon!

Just for clarification, the recording of the developer stream that accompanied the event was removed due to technical issues during the stream. Unfortunately, we did not correctly estimate the demands of the stream on the hardware and therefore the stream was flawed by unpleasant lags. We learned our lesson and it will be better next time.

I've created a list of YouTube recordings for you, so you can see what was happening through the eyes of several players. If I forgot to include someone just tweet me at @batyalquawen and I'm going to add you to the playlist.

And in the end, I want to show you a funny bug we found yesterday. Adam Franců sent it to me with this description:

While working on the tourist trails north of Svetloyarsk, we have discovered this massive structure that reesembles the shape of a lunch table. The exact origin and purpose of it is yet to be known. We have sent scout to investigate, reports suggest that this structure pose serious threat to the survivors and we have managed to take it down in a quick map editing action.

Thanks again to everyone who came to play the Gamescom demo and to everyone who gave us any feedback. We really appreciate it. See you in two weeks guys and have a nice start of a new school year!

Hello survivors! Where the last couple of Status Reports felt a bit dry and lacking on exciting content, we're doing our best to improve our track record this week! Starting off with Brian, and his excitement which clearly shows that we've had a good couple of rough, but good weeks, through Eugen, who's offering a closer look at the contents of the upcoming Gamescom DEMO, and then over to Peter, who details the changes made to melee and firearms behaviour in 0.63, it's a joyride of teasing new and exciting content. Adam continues by sharing his bits on new decals updates, our Brand Manager Martin assures everyone that the Gamescom news will make its way to everybody, and Baty invites you to Gamescom AND to our upcoming community event next week that goes together with a pre-gamescom developer live stream.

Oh hey, and there's also GIFs showing some new stuff (because yes - it is a long read again). Ready? Go!

Contents This Week

Dev Update/Brian

Dev Update/Eugen

Dev Update/Peter

Dev Update/Adam

Dev Update/Martin

Community Spotlight

Dev Update/Brian

Greetings Survivors,

As we approach Gamescom I can't help but reflect back on all the work, stress, and dedication that has preceded where we are now. Back in the end of 2013 when we were trying to prepare a build for Steam, we couldn't have imagined the opportunities all the time that has been spent on technology, and the foundation of the project would afford us. Looking at the Early Access release of one of my personal favourite pure survival titles, The Long Dark I can't help but remember what that experience was like when it first hit Steam, compared to how amazing it is now.

The team has been working tirelessly for quite some time, and the focus over the last month or so on preparing a functional vertical slice build for Gamescom, which should raise spirits a great deal internally. One of the most frustrating professional experiences for me has been working on adapting the design and experience of DayZ over the years, but knowing that you the consumers couldn't see these changes and get hands on with them until the underlying tech was ready to support it. Gamescom is just over the horizon, and I know everyone here on the team is really focused on trying to get an outstanding snapshot of the new DayZ experience for you all.

Not losing focus on the fact that the development teams'; core goals have been aimed specifically at setting the foundation of DayZ for the years to come is a difficult order. The technology that we hit Steam with fundamentally just can't do justice to the experience we want to bring, and fortunately leadership inside the company has understood that and supported our drive forward. BETA by no means is the end all be all milestone for DayZ - we have plenty of amazing things beyond it and before leaving Early Access - but this is fundamentally the biggest impact on how you the users interact with the world, and establishes the technology baseline that enables us to do all the things we've talked with you about over the years.

It's been a hell of a journey, but I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.

- Brian Hicks / Creative Director

Dev Update/Eugen

Hey guys! I'm going to get into detail in regards to what the Gamescom DEMO is and what is the plan going forward with it. As the Gamescom is getting closer, things are being set in stone.

When we decided to go forward with the idea (which was about three months ago), we were nowhere near the expected result. However, deadlines and these goals make sure you are able to focus on what is actually important and as such help you eliminate the noise that gets in the way of development. Sometimes it's feature creep, other times you just follow an overly complicated solution to a problem that’s much simpler to solve. The renewed target helped us follow through.

Everything starts with how you control a game, it needs to feel just right. When the game is making it hard to do what you actually want to accomplish through arbitrary complexity or inconsistency, it quickly becomes tedious. As this DEMO features the new player controller, animation system, physics and much more, it will feel different at first glance. Interacting with players, AI or environment should feel much smoother. We will have the new controls printed out for players coming in for an easy reference point.

As this is quite a complex rework of the game, and we want people to test specific things, it will have its own "map" built around Staroye. The map includes new roads, rocks, and more reworked old assets as we are gradually improving visual fidelity, and leaving the old stuff behind. Only subset of player usable items will be spawning for the purpose of quick access, as we expect the turnover to be quite large. The density is also much higher to make sure you can try more things in a short span of time. Besides the map, you can also expect new particle effects implemented with Enfusion technology, new character faces and much more.

It will feature the new inventory implementation, which again should feel much smoother and faster as we have invested quite a lot of time to do this properly. And one large change that we expect to have significant impact on how people play: you won't be able to move with inventory open. A lot of the things that people have used inventory to solve, like finding small items or interacting with their weapon to avoid delayed quick bar, will be long gone. Items will show their icons in the world, as well as all action being moved to contextual methods. And quick bar will become a core part of your setup as you explore the world of DayZ. You will get more slots as you get higher tier items, which in translation will increase the amount of stuff you can get done quickly in the world.

There are tons of new animations coming in to show different states of character, exhaustion for example. And many detailed systems trying to avoid using text and use of heavy UI, so that living your life in Chernarus is all about your character. New gestures that will spice up the interaction between player, hopefully causing a laugh or two. Or making sure you can understand each other over a long distance.

Lot of new UI changes that will focus on giving you enough detail if you want, or just immerse into the character in front of you. Tons of new sounds both ambient, character or weapon related.

There is new synchronisation model that is quite different from what we had before, hoping to support the full scale of 100 players and tons of AI. All these things will be stress tested heavily to make sure there are no issues when we go live. Lot of the things are however heavily work in progress, but also for the first time, all of the new tech is in and working with new data. It's exciting as hell.

And last but not least, new melee combat and ranged combat. But I'll let Peter talk about those

There will be issues I'm sure, as something always slips past, or gets broken in the last second. This is a complex game in making, and we can't wait to share our progress with you. We are discussing the possibility of making the DEMO available for a limited time on a separate Steam branch, but we'll yet have to see about that.

As you may know from previous Status Reports, we scratched old firearms and melee implementations and started from the ground up to allow us fulfil our vision of having more control over firearms and melee fights, resulting in much better, authentic user experience. Both ranged and close combat have crucial role in DayZ, may it be in PvE or PvP encounters. Over the last few weeks, there was quite a lot of progress made in both combats, and now as things starts to look well enough, it's a good time to talk about them and showcase them.

Ranged combat with firearms is defined by their handling and aiming models. So far on handling side, we have loading of firearms with either magazine or chambering directly with ammo from inventory, quick slots and even from the ground. Next is the mechanism manipulation itself, were you can feed ammo from a magazine to chamber in case of manual firearms, or eject ammo in automatic ones. It's also used to un-jam the mechanism once it gets jammed by a casing not being ejected properly. We reintroduced zeroing and fire modes, as well as iron sights, though optics are not working now due to some issues we're battling down the line (specifically switching to camera point on optic attachment, to be honest we have ran into some problems with attachments in general lately, as they are not in hierarchical order, so it will require some rewrite).

Aiming model of firearms is where the real fun begins. Currently, we have a new sway mechanic (yay, finally!) - it mimics breathing with constant vertical movement as well as corrections of hands direction with subtle random horizontal movement. It's very effective and robust design solution which allows us to modify output by plenty of factors, like firearm attachments configuration, especially hand-guard and butt-stock, and its weight, character stance and movement, amount of stamina, overall character state with all that unpleasant things like low body temperature or diseases, and of course also the hold breath feature (yes, I'm not kidding).

Recoil is another functional part of the aiming model now. While projectile is fired, we've introduced movement to firearms in all three dimensions. We are experimenting with pre-animated recoils, which are procedurally modified to produce nice looking visuals with ability to differentiate between firearms. Similarly to sway, it can be modified, this time it could depend on calibre, barrel length, overall firearm weight and its attachments, especially muzzle devices like brakes or compensators, and we are also considering impact from stamina. What's still missing is some sights misalignment in the aiming model, same goes to lifting firearms next to obstacles, however we will get there as both are a must have for proper aiming model.

Quick update regarding new melee combat - in current state, it's already way ahead when compared to the old system. Apart from full body attack animations, which can now be chained into combos and opponents reacts to hits with proper strength and directions of impacts, there is also a dashed attack from sprint implemented now. I would like to highlight the current melee targeting implementation which is taking length of a melee weapon into account, as well as distance direction and vertical angle to opponent.

Combined with rotating and dragging character towards selected targets during attack animations, it produces great looking, fluid and addictive melee combat. It's quite hard to miss your opponent now, gone are the days of grotesque melee fights where everybody ran in circles trying to play game of chance to deal some hit.

[media.giphy.com]

Last but not least, we also introduced some changes to controls of the new character. What really stands out is changing of stances which is using one key now instead of three previously. With programmers and animators, we are discussing missing moves of new character, like leaning, jumping or climbing, as we would like to push on these and make them more interesting for gameplay.

Apart from Gamescom 2017... see you in Chernarus folks!

- Peter Nespesny / Lead Designer

Dev Update/Adam

Much like in the last Status Report, let's begin with a showcase of some additional improvements to the visual fidelity of Chernarus. This time, let's talk about decals.

On Chernarus, decals are primarily used to make specific areas (such as concrete surfaces and roads) look more damaged / abandoned. We cant simply add local damage to the concrete / roads texture itself as it would look too repetitive in the end. And so these decals are a great way to add a local damage exactly where we want.

While decal textures were trying really hard to show that there are holes in the road, they ultimately failed alone because they were missing visual depth in-game. Luckily, this was changed with the recent implementation of parallax mapping for decals. And since we have got new textures for roads for quite some time, we have also decided to re-do textures for all road damage decals so the visuals of decals match together with the new road textures (visual inconsistency between old decals and new roads is one of the reasons we decided to postpone the release of new road textures, originally planned for update 0.62). Here are some examples of how medium and small-sized decals look after these changes:

These changes (along with the new road textures that you can also notice on pictures) will be available with the update 0.63.

And as usual - a short report on what has happened on western border of Chernarus since the last Status Report. Details were added around the Myshkino dam (including the HV power-line connection to Zelenogorsk), new recreational facility of TES company near the shore of Myshkino dam and probably the biggest lumber mill we currently have on Chernarus has been added north of Myshkino military site. These locations will hopefully make encounters in the Myshkino tents valley a bit more interesting and offer additional looting options for the players who prefer to roam the western region of Chernarus.

As always, please remember that all pictures show work-in-progress content.

- Adam Franců / Senior Map Designer

Dev Update/Martin

As we started outlining our Gamescom DEMO over the last two Status Reports, I've noticed a raising concern in the community about us presenting a build of the game on a gaming convention rather than delivering it directly to the core players on our Experimental and Stable Steam branches. As our community of existing players is what we truly care about the most, I'd like to address these concerns and add further context to Eugen's text above.

First of all, thanks to Brian and his great relationships with guys over at Astro Gaming or Twitch, DayZ's been present at many public events in the past, and I'm sure it's always been fun for everyone to meet and greet while occasionally streaming or presenting some of the upcoming features. Usually, most of the news from these events also made it out to the general public - either by being directly shared by the DayZ team over social media, or organically by someone from the community posting on the forums or Reddit.

This worked quite well, and considering that those activities were not a part of any sophisticated marketing/promotional plan (there hasn't been anything like that for DayZ, and this won't change until BETA drops on Stable), it's also been quite effective.

Gamescom is a little bit of a step up from these events, as we'll be part of a bigger Bohemia Interactive booth. That means that our presence needs to be a bit more official, that we need to present something meaningful, and ideally also playable. That's where the Gamescom DEMO comes in - as a publicly playable content, it also conveniently solves three problems for us:

a) it helps the development team to deliver a package even before the first BETA build is done internally, or ready for public branches - hopefully helping everybody have a feeling of accomplishment (which Brian nicely described in his part)

b) it allows us to do very early focus tests in a controlled environment where we're standing right next to the person playing

c) it helps us make a point to the general public that we are being serious about our intentions to bring DayZ to a stable 1.0 release, and support it for years to come (which some people still refuse to believe in)

As Eugen already pointed out, we may (or may not), at some point, and in one way or another, make this DEMO available to all of you who won't be able to try it at Gamescom. While it's not fully representative of DayZ as the hardcore survival game it should be (and technically only works in a "LAN" mode as well), we understand that everybody just wants to get their hands on the new player controller!

More importantly though, we have plans for extensive online coverage of all the things we're about to show at Gamescom. Just to pick a few that will happen right during the Gamescom week: we&'ll be live on the Twitch Gamescom stage for about 15 minutes, talking about the DEMO and DayZ BETA in detail, including some gameplay. We'll have a couple of media appointments that will hopefully produce some cool articles, and we'll also be producing our own photos or possibly even some basic video content directly from the show floor.

Now, creating (audio)visual content of any upcoming game changes is always a struggle. With the way our community-driven development works (the moment we have a "legit" build in our hands that we need your feedback on, we drop it to Experimental), it is sometimes literally impossible to even play the internal branch of DayZ for several minutes straight, and prepare content in advance.

This has been the case with the supporting content we're making for Gamescom, and over the last two weeks, it produced some rather hilarious clips:

While those GIFs may look like a lot of fun, the reality is that any bug like that always breaks the gameplay, not to mention the recorded clip or screenshot. Count in some nasty crashes, network issues or general server degradation we still need to resolve, and you have a good reason for our Status Reports rarely including any relevant visual content at all.

It's also why we're still relatively far from dropping any BETA package to the public Steam branches - while our new player character (and other systems) already work well within the limited scope of the Gamescom DEMO, they are not ready for the full-scale DayZ experience just yet.

Well, that'll do it for today - I hope this helped some of you to get an insight on what's happening around the DayZ office. Baty should have some more details about our upcoming Gamescom coverage!

P.S. - please do let us know if you're coming to Cologne, and come hang out with us!

- Martin Čulák/ Brand Manager

Community Spotlight

Hello guys,

We have two weeks till Gamescom and in our office, as in many other gamedev offices around the world, we're preparing for the game show, and we are starting to panic a bit. There is still so much to be done! I spent the last two weeks working on videos, which should be done before Gamescom, but as Martin wrote above, the game is still not in an ideal shape. Therefore, we tried to make the best of the actual unstable version to be able to show you some of the new features which you will be able to experience at Gamescom. I will not try to hide that it is very challenging to capture scenes without any errors and bugs, be we are close to finish and the video should be ready for Gamescom.

In any case, Gamescom is near and the mood in the Dev Team can be best described as:

But enough of silly things. Let’s take a look at what is waiting for us in the next couple of weeks.

Next Thursday 17th August at 17:30 CEST (GMT+1) you can look forward to a stream from our Bohemia Interactive office. We would like to share more information about what you can expect in our booth at Gamescom, we will tell you more about a demo we are preparing and also about a community meet-up which will be organized at Gamescom. We will talk in more detail about BETA and answer some questions. And this time, we will have moderators and better sound, so it will surely be better than last time! But the stream will not be only about DayZ. We will talk more about other BI projects, like Mini DAYZ, Ylands and Arma 3. Do not miss this stream; you can learn a lot of new information there!

Simultaneously with the stream, we will host a small event. It will be a battle of the castle again, where we will return to the Middle Ages and play as knights. The event will take place on 17th August at 17:00 CEST (GMT+1) and you can be part of it if you are interested. You can sing up HERE.

And now back to the Gamescom[www.gamescom-cologne.com].It will be held between 23rd and 26th August at Cologne in Germany. As I said in previous Status Report, we will be there, specifically in hall 10.1., booth A010. Beside DayZ team, we will also have Ylands and Arma teams there. You will be able to play the Gamescom DEMO about which the devs were already talking above.

More information about the demo will be revealed at the stream next week. I want to point out that the DayZ and Arma parts will be separated from public area and will only be accessible for adults 18+. But don’t worry if you are not 18 yet. You can come visit us at the community meet-up in front of our booth, talk with the devs and get some gifts. Community meet-up will take place on 25th August at 13:00 CEST, so don’t hesitate to come, we will be happy to see you. And if you come in DayZ cosplay, you will make us even happier!

For those of you that cannot make it to this year’s Gamescom, let me assure you again: we are preparing reports, videos and photos. Don’t forget to follow our social media channels!

Finally, we will have a look at some of your creations.

First, I would like to present you a member of Spanish community who is playing on role-play server DayZRP and is sharing his adventures on his YouTube channel. His last video is "La masacre" and as the title suggests, it is about a massacre in Lopatino’s church. There are English subtitles for those who do not understand Spanish. I really like the story and what I like even more is the amazing comic that accompanies the video.

Further on, I was pleasantly surprised by a community member paulmosin, who is sending his ideas of a real world survivor to our Twitter.

We love him!

On Reddit, I discovered a post by user SpectreRobin. It is a DayZ picture, painted on 3 canvases, which is inspired by a well-known screenshot[imgur.com]. It was drawn by his friend, who is a very talented artist. It reminds me of paintings in our office[www.instagram.com] (which I would very much like to take home) and we can be only jealous that he has such a nice decoration on his walls.

Thank you very much for all your content that you share with us on our official social networks, we really appreciate it. We will have to move the next status report to 29th August, because it would be right in the Gamescom week and we will not be able to prepare it while at the convention. But as I wrote above, we will be definitely sharing the photos, experiences and impressions with you the whole week. So make sure to follow us and we are looking forward to seeing you on the stream, and at Gamescom!